Winding Down the Garden Some More

Clippings from the garden

Several days ago, I wrote that I was starting to wind down the 2026 garden. There were some more light frosts after that initial one. I did not cover the tomatoes, which mostly came through. The basil, however, pretty much bit the dust. (Hmm, can plants rooted in the dirt bite the dust? Well, sure, if you think of the idiom itself; the basil is done for the year. But given that vegetables and herbs bite the dust so they can grow all growing season long, it makes me think I need a better way to express the end of the season!) And the flowers and miscellaneous "stuff" (no other word fits it) growing at the rear of the garden are also looking done done done for the season.

In response, I have been wading into the garden the last two afternoons to start cutting down and pulling up the weeds, the flower stalks, the everything. Well, not the milkweed; it is tough. I can cut it down substantially, but it will take a shovel to uproot it. Once everything else is out of the way, the remaining milkweed stubs will be obvious. 

Making progress 

I will wade back in this afternoon and, I hope, bring the bulk of the remaining things down down down. We have had a string of bright autumn days with sunshine and warm temperatures, so while I definitely am not making hay while the sun shines, I am clearing the garden while the weather holds. I am salvaging the few small zinnias that are still blooming and a small vase of them is brightening our table. There was even a cosmos or two for the gathering. 

I am not trying to overthink the question of next year's gardens. Friends who garden, one aggressively, one more like my style (casual at best), have been sharing some of their thoughts in recent letters. We all are kicking around ideas. My aunt Gail, who gardens all year long given her location (southern southern California) has recently started yet another round of sweet peas and turnips (and probably other things as well; those are just the two that stick in my mind). But even she is noticing effects of climate change on her gardening, which at this location has been for some 50+ years. Not just in the storms sweeping the California coast (she lives eight miles inland) but in her plants blooming or withering out of season. So while she continues to garden fiercely, she admits that she is not sure how things will turn out. 

As I cut and cleaned yesterday, I came across our Mayo star. You can see it is the above photo as I worked towards it. It was made to be staked in a flower bed or garden. Warren and I bought this early on when we started at Mayo. There was a downtown street fair/arts festival right by the Clinic (and the Clinic dominates downtown Rochester) on one of our very early visits and we bought it with love and hope for the future. 11 years later, we still have love and hope.

And the star.

Winding Down the Garden

From the garden: basil, tomatoes, and peppers

 

Our first frost came early Sunday morning. I had been watching the alerts from Saturday morning forward, so I intentionally spent an hour outside Saturday afternoon picking every last pepper and then pulling this year's pepper plants up to go into the yard waste. 

That hour in the garden revealed in no uncertain terms just how much I have neglected the garden this year. The chickweed was everywhere, and that is not me being careless with my words. It truly was everywhere. As I uprooted the peppers, I pulled lots of it too. 

There is still a lot of chickweed plants thriving. A. Lot. Frankly, the chickweed looks better than the pretty beat up looking flowers in the back of the garden. Somewhere in that mess are the remains of one last head of cabbage that got chewed up by bugs before I picked it. And to add insult to injury, for the first time ever, the marigold border is ragged with many marigolds dead. Warren has always taken care of the marigolds, so their neglect speaks to how overloaded his schedule is too. 

Despite the wreckage, I brought in enough peppers to store four quarts of cut peppers in the freezer, besides the additional cup or so for a dish I made last night for supper. 

I clipped back the tomatoes some more, gauging what I may still pick. A few of the larger ones; a few dozen of the cherries. If the weather holds to be fairly mild, if the sun shines, that is. 

I made the decision several weeks ago to let the basil go to flower for the bees. All the same, I handpicked a large bowl of leaves and made one last batch of pesto for 2026. (No surprise, the chickweed surrounded the basil patch, although for the most part the basil easily topped the chickweed in height.)

Sigh.

I am truly on the fence as to how much gardening to do next year. On the one hand, I love fresh tomatoes and peppers. The flowers (cosmos, zinnias, others) cheer me and make our pollinators and birds happy. On the other hand, I need more energy—physical and emotional—to make it viable. 

Sigh.

In another week or so, I will take both a hoe and a rake to the chickweed and remove as much as possible. Chickweed seeds rapaciously, so you cannot just till it under. But we can and will put compost on the garden and till that under afterwards.

As Saturday wore on, the air chilled even more. Warren, an hour away for the dress rehearsal and concert in Mansfield, called to see if I had seen the moon: a silvery waxing half moon. Yes, I replied, adding that I had just put sheets over the tomatoes given the frost warnings. 

Ready for the frost

As always, once the garden is officially down for the year, not only in production but also in cleanup, I will think about what 2027 might hold. I feel I can do better and that is something I need to seriously contemplate. The oncoming winter is a perfect time to look back at the 2026 garden and wonder what I might try in 2027.

And the moon can look over my shoulder all winter long to keep me on track.

Saturday night's moon

A Margin of Time

Rehearsal; Warren is the musician on the very far left

I am penning this out on a pad balanced on my lap, waiting for the Friday night rehearsal of the Mansfield Symphony to begin. My phone is on silent; if it weren't for my elderly father, I wouldn't even carry it. I have a book with me (the one with "sexual content"); I'm not quite at the halfway point in it, so I anticipate getting past that point tonight (the rehearsal runs until 10 p.m.).

I am grateful beyond grateful to be an hour from home, no "tasks" (define that however you wish), no immediate demands on my time, and a long evening ahead.

The last several weeks in our household have been on overload for both of us. Family matters, rehearsals and concerts (Warren is playing in two separate ones this weekend—one up here in Mansfield, one down there in Westerville), classes, doctor appointments (all mine), Warren's booming percussion business, legal clinic matters, and on and on and on. Not all bad, mind you. But not all good either. Not very many of these intersect for us, so I am often heading one way, figuratively or literally, and Warren another, adding stress to stay connected beyond looking at the calendar.

Matters have to be attended to; tasks have to get done. They are what they are; it is what it is.

Through this all, I have to remember to give myself some grace. In whatever size, shape, or form that may be. As we traveled the hour north to the rehearsal, I marveled at the colors in the leaves. The skies and the trees and the temperatures make it clear that summer is over. Those were moments of mindfulness for me; those were moments of grace. 

The conductor has just taken the podium, so that is enough for now.

Saturday Morning Postscript

Last night I read, I listened, I watched the musicians (mostly Warren and the other percussionists; it was a percussion-intensive concert). I got up and walked around from time to time; the hall was cold and the lobby was slightly less chilled. During one of my walks to the lobby and back, I looked outside and saw the rain pounding down, enough that an announcement that some of the water had breached the cargo doors in the back and musicians would want to make sure their cases were not wet. 

Just little bits of a long evening.

Warren has already left this morning for the rehearsal in Westerville (that concert is late afternoon tomorrow) and will head straight to Mansfield from there. He will get home tonight, if lucky, by 11:00, putting in a 14+ hour day.

And yes, I have a lot of tasks today. 

Indeed It Came

While not a major storm, it did indeed snow last night. Let's just say I am glad we got the garden down. This was the view out our bedroom window this morning:

It is unlikely we"ll be eating outside until, oh, maybe next spring:

Table for one? Or two? Or...none? 

Winter poses its own issues: colder (need more heat inside) and slipperier (need more caution outside) being two of the top ones. It was winter when I took the spectacular fall that left my wrist in pieces, after all. 

But, for me, winter's gifts outweigh its disadvantages. They always have. I savor the quiet outside (snow is a great silencer). I relish the early evenings and the warmth of our living room: literally and figuratively. 

I love winter. 

Yes, I know we are still about six weeks from the official start of winter. Here in central Ohio, after the next few wintry days, we are supposed to have weather back in the 50s, proper fall temperatures. Many trees are still holding onto their leaves, although certainly this snow interlude will hurry that process along. I will deeply appreciate those autumn days when they return, trust me. 

But for now, I am savoring the touch of snow and the hint of what is to come:

It's all good. 

The Moon, The Moon

Photo by Abdullah Ahmad on Unsplash

 

Warren and I went to see Macbeth last night, which the OWU Theater Department was staging. Macbeth is my very favorite work by Shakespeare and I was excited to see it performed live.

Yesterday was a rainy, cold, gray day. Before going to the play, we ran an errand nearby, getting in and out of the car quickly. Clouds were scudding overhead and both of us, looking up into the darkening sky, said, almost simultaneously, "There's the moon." 

And indeed, there was the moon, well on its way to a full moon next week, hazy behind a scrim of clouds. 

As Warren knows well, I am drawn to the moon: not as an astronomical feature, not as an astrological predictor, but just because it is the moon. I have been tracking it in the sky for decades, seeing it in its different phases from various points from the east coast to the west coast, but mostly from my own backyard.

I love the moon.

Shakespeare noted the moon more than once in his works. The one most quoted is when Romeo prepares to swear his love to Juliet by the moon and she admonishes him:

O, swear not by the moon, th'inconstant moon,

That monthly changes in her circled orb,                      

Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.

October's full moon was a super moon, rising even larger and brighter than a regular full moon, because the moon was closer to the earth than usual. In writing to my friend Tani, I referenced Juliet's lines and said that if ever there was a teenager's naive statement, it was hers. The moon inconstant? The one thing the moon is, "in her circled orb," is very constant. Yes, the moon changes its phases, but it is always, always constant.

It is not coincidence that both the Jewish and the Muslim calendar are lunar calendars. 

As we exited the play last night, the night was darker and colder. (The theater was cold too, so both of us were chilled even before we opened the exit door.)  We were parked within a half block of the theater, and the walk was cold, wet, and mercifully short. All the same, before we got into the car, we both looked up and once again saw the moon, misty and hazy, but all the same there.

In Act 2, Scene 1 of Macbeth, Fleance says to his father, "The moon is down." 

It wasn't last night. 

It's a Good Life

In the tangle, still some tomatoes! 

"It's a good life," my dad said as he and I parted today, Dad to go up to lunch in the dining room and me to walk home.

I about fell over when he said that, but recovered quickly enough to say, "It is indeed. See you soon." My surprise was that I had never ever heard him say anything even remotely resembling that thought. But he clearly meant it and today I needed to hear that message. 

My morning emotions started out grayer than they have been as of late (and they have not been bright and sunny in recent days). How gray? I got ready to walk out the door to run an early morning errand, then came to a standstill in our living room. I took the car keys out of my pocket and took off my jacket. I plopped down on a chair and called up to Warren, "I'm not going to Kroger." "Are you okay?" "No." Warren came down the stairs with concern. "What's wrong?" "I feel like I'm ready to cry."

No specific reason. I was just ready to cry.

I did not cry. I "pulled myself together" and did some small chores: collecting all the fans we had used during the summer (five total) to ready them for their winter hiatus in our attic; collecting, folding, and putting away the fabric we use on our east and west windows in the summer to cut down on the direct heat from the bright sun (nine pieces total). Then I walked to Dad's apartment and spent time with him until, as I got ready to leave, he surprised me with his comment about this being a good life.

I thought about my dad's words as I walked home. The sun was out, the temperature was cool, fall is definitely setting in.  Just being outside in the sun lifted some of the grayness. I ran into one of my long-ago DI kids, now on the edge of 40 (40? How did these kids get to be 40?) and we hugged one another. "Tell Ben I said hi," she said as we parted.

Warren was getting ready to leave for class when I walked through the door, so talk was brief and most of it would have to wait. I did manage to tell him what Dad said about it being a good life, and Warren smiled. "Sure is."

After Warren drove off, I could feel the grayness starting to gather again. So after a quick lunch, I focused on concrete tasks, some inside and some outside. After starting a load of towels, I retreated to the kitchen garden and spent time in bee therapy. There were not a lot of bees in the basil today, but the ones that were there were hard at work. As for me, after sitting on the bee stool for a bit, I turned to my own outside tasks. Okay, I was not collecting pollen, but I did trim and clear out overgrown tomato vines, as well as repair the bee stool (it had come into our life broken). Will the duct tape hold it until the bees are gone for the season? Probably.

Somewhere between cutting and cleaning out many of the overgrown tomato vines (and finding more tomatoes within) and folding the now dry laundry, the grayness lifted a little more.

It is late in the evening as I type these words. Other obligations and events filled the rest of the afternoon and early evening. I have stayed steady. The big event was a community gathering to discuss food, food security, food insecurity. It was an emotional discussion for those of us in the room (some representing local non-profits, others there because of their own passion and commitment to help others). It is a topic close to my heart. In many ways, it was the absolute best way for me to spend an hour, talking with others (we broke into groups) about how this community (our city, Delaware) both sees and does not see the hurdles and issues for making sure all have access to food and, in a larger sense, all are welcome at the table. Warren was there beside me, adding his observations about the greater community and its needs. I saw familiar faces, I saw new faces, and it was a welcome and needed affirmation that giving my time and heart to this community is what sustains and feeds me.

Afterwards, we ran that Kroger errand I had set aside this morning. It was cold, it was rainy, we were both chilled and exhausted. "Turn into KFC," I said. "We need something warm and ready to eat." [Note: Yes, KFC is a guilty pleasure that we very occasionally indulge in.] Once home, we hurried into the house, turned on the furnace for the first time this fall, and ate our supper quietly, grateful for the heat, the warm food, and, most important, one another.

It IS a good life. 

Bee Therapy

My basil patch in full flower

I have been writing a lot (A. Lot.) lately about focusing on small things to center myself. There is a lot of noise and overload on many fronts, and some large family matters (my side of the family) that have really hit hard and, in my case, triggered my PTSD. Warren has been giving me support and comfort; we earlier this month passed our 17th wedding anniversary and I am daily aware of how much light and joy and love and strength he gives me. 

Even without a wedding anniversary, I am so grateful for what he has given me; he lifts me up. All the same, and this is one of those times, I sometimes stumble and fall back into those outside matters. So I think I caught him a little off guard yesterday when I said that I had thought of maybe going back to therapy.

After saying that out loud (as things sound different when spoken outside of our head), I thought back to the things I had learned 22+ years ago with my brilliant therapist. Can I do this, "this" being work through where I am, using those lessons? 

Later that afternoon, as I turned over the therapy question in my mind, I said to Warren, "I have an idea of how to move forward." 

Warren looked at me. "And...?"

"Bee therapy."

Bee therapy? Yes, bee therapy. 

I always let the basil patch go to flower in the fall and this year is no exception. As we move deeper into the fall, the bees take over the basil flowers.

So after announcing that, I grabbed a garden stool (thank you, Amanda!) and set it in the garden in the recently cleared lettuce patch, which is right next to the basil patch. I then sat down and waited.

But not for long. 

A Sunday bee

At this time of year, in the basil patch, bees fly in, bees fly out. Bees burrow their heads deep in the basil flowers then pull out, go sideways or up or down to another. Repeat.

I repeated therapy again today, albeit early afternoon when the sun was on the patch and it was considerably warmer. Yesterday in the cooling air there were perhaps a half-dozen bees. Today, in the full sun, I counted over two dozen. 

A bee today

Bee therapy.

As I watch them and their singular focus, my mind slows down. My body relaxes. Bit by bit, I find myself letting go of the emotional bundle I am holding.

I hope we are in for a very long autumn. As I mentioned in my last post, we just had our first frost. It was a light one, but frost is frost. I know at some point the bees will disappear for the year. Some of them are already showing their lifespan is growing short.  I even petted a bee yesterday. It had landed on a stem before I got out there and was clearly too tired and worn to lift off. I touched it very gently and it wiggled, slowly, one antenna, but did not move.  

Bee therapy. Who knew? 

"I'm ready for my closeup..."

This Year's Gardens: Chapter 10

Zinnia

Blogger friend Sam, who blogs at Sam Squared, recently had a post titled "End of Summer Juggle." I was so tired that when I saw the title, I read it as "End of Summer Jungle," and laughed at myself for mixing my garden thoughts with her summer thoughts.

Our Kitchen Garden IS a jungle. Between the cherry tomatoes gone wild, the cosmos gone wild, the agastache gone wild, and the zinnias gone wild, it is a thicket of stems and branches and bees and butterflies and even an occasional hummingbird. Earlier this week, I waded (the only verb that fits) into the thick of it, garden snips in hand, and cut a lot of tomato stems and branches off. Remember that scene in the movie Hook where one of the Lost Boys keep smoothing out the wrinkles on Peter Pan's face (played brilliantly by the late, great Robin Williams) and then announces, "Oh, there you are, Peter!" That's how I felt after some ten minutes: "Oh, there you are, garden!"

Late yesterday afternoon, Warren was in the dogleg of our backyard, where he had built a large storage shed for his business and for yard equipment like the tiller and mowers. As he and we continue to move into the next phase of our lives, he has been working in the shed to rearrange, cull through, and move various tools and materials. I came out to keep him company and sat there for some time, then announced I was getting my work gloves and be back. Five minutes later, I was taking apart the fence surrounding the Hej Garden. I realized several weeks ago that the time for me to operate this second garden, even though it is "right there," has come and gone. So slowly I unwound the fence and pulled up the support stakes.

Dave, whose yard contains that garden, came out and chatted a few minutes. I told him this was the last year I was gardening here; that Warren would till it later this fall and we'd seed it, but our gardening days were over. He nodded; they had gardened there the first year or two after they bought the house, but, as Dave noted, laughing, "with all of our activities, gardening, though enjoyable, was low on the priority list."

The site formerly known as the Hej Garden. 

So the Hej Garden is down and done. As a final fitting note, just know that the fat, happy groundhog who lives under a large brush pile on Adam and Maura's property just feet away from the north end of the Hej Garden breached the garden fence and ate BOTH of the remaining two red cabbages before I could cut them and make more slaw. 

The fencing that did not stop the groundhog

Even though I have been gardening for years, every year I learn new things about spacing and grouping, and this year was no exception. I am already making notes (both mental and actual) about next year's gardens, both vegetable and flower. The biggest change coming to the Kitchen Garden will be moving the agastache, which has flourished there, to the flower bed down near the pine trees, which we plan on expanding (all perennials). We love the agastache, but it takes up more room each year. Along with moving it out, I will not be sowing the kitchen garden with cosmos, but instead will sow the small bed immediately behind the house. Cosmos are beautiful and bright, but I want the room they take up. And, in a surprise to myself, it turns out that I love zinnias and will seed a row of them along the very back of the kitchen garden, against the outside garage wall. The ones I sowed this year were in a packet sent to my father from the Alzheimer's Association and the results were tall and colorful and made me smile.

As for next year's planting in the Kitchen Garden, I learned that I had been stunting the peppers' growth by having them too crowded and, wait for it, too shaded by the tomatoes all these years. This year, the peppers got the south side of the garden, and except for the two unfortunates closest to the cosmos/tomato jungle, the peppers have been having a pepper party!

Some of the peppers, ready for their closeup 

There should be weeks yet of tomatoes and peppers. The basil is growing beautifully still and while I am leaning towards letting it flower for the bees, I may do one more small harvest to dry the leaves for seasoning. My neighbor Mary was taken aback when I told her my plans to let it flower. "But it gets bitter then!" "But the bees love it," I replied, and I told her how I liked to think of the bees wintering over with their hive smelling like basil. Mary smiled; so that's why I was thinking that! 

Summer is winding down. But the bees and the flowers and the Kitchen Garden are still going strong. I look forward to seeing what the next month brings. 

The 2024 Gardens: Part 9

A few weeks ago, while writing about my reentry into canning, I noted that I had taken down our kitchen garden (the Hej garden had gone down a few days earlier) with the threat of a solid frost.  I picked everything that was ripe:

Tomatoes filling our window sill

Or soon to be ripe:

Ripening

But the gardens themselves were down. 

Given the trip to Mayo (which went swimmingly well) and then some health issues with my Dad, I have not yet gotten back to clearing away the tomato vines and other plants that did not fit in the yard waste containers:

The kitchen garden after I tore most of it out

It's autumn. Our days have returned to balmy temperatures. There is a concert coming up (Warren is at the first rehearsal tonight), we have some other things going on, and I knew I would eventually get around to cleaning up the garden.

All in good time, my little pretty, all in good time.

Earlier today, I went outside to dig up some butterfly weed roots for a friend. I had collected a bag of seeds for her, but I knew from our own experience that you can also just transplant the roots and get a stand started that way as well. Scattered between the brick patio and the butterfly weed were...tomatoes. 

When I took down the garden, I picked all the green tomatoes I could, which went into the relish:

Some of the haul from taking the gardens down 

But I did not get every single still green cherry tomato: some fell to the ground, some were hidden in the vines, whatever. And sitting outside these last several days, warmed by the sun, left alone by the squirrels and chipmunks, those green cherry tomatoes ripened.

Ripe tomatoes.

Oh my.

Before we left for the Emerald City on October 27, I had just (just!) finished the very last tomato from this year's gardens. I savored the last bite, knowing darn well it would be June at the earliest before I tasted fresh tomatoes again. 

But here they were: riches at my feet. You bet I carried them inside and washed them:

The very last tomatoes! 

I had a few on my salad this evening. I will have a few more tomorrow and the next day. And then I will say (for a sweet, second time) farewell to the tomatoes for the year. 

Sometimes you find unexpected riches when you are not looking for them. Sometimes, even on the toughest of days, you find treasure.

Today I found treasure. 

A Year Ago Today

A year ago today, Warren came to my room and said, "So, are you ready?"

A year ago today, Warren picked up the heavy soft bag, I picked up the very light soft bag, and we walked out the door.

A year ago today, we slowly walked down the hall and got on the elevator. 

A year ago today, I slid into the front seat of the car, Warren started the engine, and we looked at each other. "Ready?"

A year ago today, Warren drove slowly home, purposely taking the slower route up Franklin Street. "I thought you'd want to see the trees," Warren said. They were aflame—the golds, the reds—all brilliant. I was in tears, saying over and over as the leaves drifted down, "Oh, I didn't miss fall after all!" 

A year ago today, I slowly walked back into our home for the first time in nine weeks. I was weak and frail and still had months of recovery ahead of me, but I was home.

I am penning out these words Friday night to type out on Saturday. I will set this post to publish on Sunday the 27th, which is the one-year anniversary of my homecoming from the medical messes of 2023. By the time this post publishes, we will be well on our way to Rochester and Mayo Clinic. The sun will be rising as we head west on US 30 across Indiana. That route is lined with deciduous trees, and they should be in their October glory, just like they were a year ago today when Warren drove up Franklin to our home. 

A year ago today, I came home. Today, I am here to celebrate hitting that one-year mark, and for that I am grateful.

Famous Last Words

Keep reading...

Back in January, 2016, I wrote about finally (finally!) letting go of and donating all of my canning equipment, from the ancient (and heavy) pressure canner to the tongs, the canning funnels, the rack for the bottom of the canner, and a number of pint jars.

"I'll never can again," I announced firmly. 

And I haven't. Summers came and went without the least itch to can or regret that I was no longer canning. I meant what I said about canning: I was done.

Well, done right up until these past few days. With frost predicted last week, I started thinking about what was still outside on the plants. The weather prediction came true that night, with threats of a heavier frost following the next night. The tomato and pepper plants went limp just from the light frost; the basil had turned black. I hastily picked any remaining vegetables; the heavier frost that night completed finishing off the garden.

There were a lot of green tomatoes. 

A. Lot.

I have tried a few times in the past to ripen green tomatoes inside, always with poor results. So that didn't look like a route I wanted to take again. Fried green tomatoes? Never tried them, never made them, and these tomatoes were probably not the best candidates in size, shape, and consistency.

What else can you make from green tomatoes? Green tomato relish, it turns out. 

With a hot bath canning process.

Hmmn. I had the tomatoes. I had the right spices. I had sugar and vinegar. I had a large, deep pot that would work for the hot bath. I had some half pint and pint jars (even when you give them away, they still come into your house). Canning seals: got those at a quick stop on the way to Warren's rehearsal in Mansfield. 

What did I lack? A canning rack (glass jars cannot rest on the bottom of the hot bath pot without running the risk of shattering). Canning tongs, which have plasticized tong ends to grip the jars as you lift them in and out of the hot bath. A wide mouth funnel to fill the jars. These are essential items when canning. Period. 

There was no way I was going to go out and BUY canning equipment. So I did what any conscientious frugal person would do. I Googled workarounds for the rack, the tongs, and the funnel. After reading a few sources on each, and thinking about what I already had to work with, I was ready to try assembling the tools I needed.

For the canning rack? Some people create a rack from aluminum foil. Folded dishtowels also can be used, as my Aunt Gail told me when I called her the next day and we laughed about canning. Again, the point is to keep the jars from resting on the bottom of the pot. You know what also works well for a canning rack? Cookie cutters!

There are always cookie cutters in this house.

As for the tongs, we own a pair of long tongs. But, again, you need something on the end point that will grip hot glass. Such as...rubber bands! 

Repurposed tongs! 

The wide mouth funnel took me a minute to figure out and come up with a good solution. Some sites suggested methods of creating one that either did not make sense or looked too complicated. I looked at our kitchen funnels and sighed at the thought of having to cut the narrow mouth off the largest one. Then I looked over at our recycling tub and...a discarded gallon milk jug! 

Perfect wide mouth funnel! 

Soon I had a a pot of green tomato relish bubbling away (20 minutes) as I prepared my "new" canning tools. And soon after that (10 minutes), I was lifting the first jars of canned relish out of the pot.

Green tomato relish bubbling away

After Warren and I talked about my making relish, and how I put together a way to can, he got a look on his face. A faraway, remembering something look.

"I always liked that pepper/onion relish we used to make." 

I still had the recipe in my recipe folder (a paper folder, folks, not one on my computer). I pulled it out, read it through, and, yep, a hot bath recipe.

Guess what's up next?

Ready for their close-up 

"I'll never can again."

Ha. 

The 2024 Gardens: Part 8

 After weeks of very dry weather, we got some of the spinoff from Hurricane Helene late last week. Not the horrific damage done much further south, especially in the mountains of North Carolina, and not even the hard winds and rains a few hours south in Portsmouth (OH) and the Greenup (KY) area, but enough rain and wind to both refresh and smack the gardens around.

On the heels of that event, and aware that October is now here, I knew that it was time to wade into the kitchen garden and do some harvesting. 

I again grew Trail of Tears black beans, a heritage bean. Warren built two structures for the beans to climb; those were great. We did not think about their placement, tucked in the back on the garden (one against the garage wall), with the agastache on one side and the cosmos blocking much of the way on the other. The agastache and the beans tangled together, not good for either of them. I planted fewer beans this year to boot. The beans grew, but the results were significantly less: about 12 ounces versus almost 3 pounds last year. Next year, I think, next year: different placement, different other things. 

The beans

The peppers got banged around by the weather, with some of the branches breaking off. So I picked a lot of peppers (albeit not a peck) and then spent this morning dicing most of them to freeze and cook with over the winter. We will enjoy the large yellow bells now in salads and as snacks.

The peppers (with some stray tomatoes hanging around)

The basil loved the rain and I may get a small third cutting of it, depending on how October unfolds. That made me smile when I saw it springing back yesterday.

The hardest loss was the cherry tomatoes. Oh, all of the tomato plants did fine for the most part with very little breakage. But the all-but-ripe cherries, which I have been eating happily for weeks, got waterlogged and split open. Not quite but almost a total loss. I know, I know, it's nature. There's always next year. But unlike my dear friend (and co-gardener) Amanda, who told me a few weeks ago that she is "tomatoed out," and unlike another dear friend Tani, who wrote me that she had just torn out her tomato plants for the year (she lives in Minneapolis and their season is different), I hang on until the last tomato. The. Very. Last. Tomato. We're not there yet, but even without the loss, I know that time is growing short on my tomato season. With luck, the green cherries will ripen, or ripen enough that I can finish them inside, and there are still some larger ones on the vine. But, dang, I all but wept seeing those broken cherry tomatoes. 

For lots of reasons, from the late start in this year's gardens (not making that mistake next year) to family events (Dad's move and the emptying of the house) to other external needs that intruded into my time and concentration,  I can safely say without fear of contradiction how I "thought" the gardens would go this year, including how much effort I would put into them, was nowhere close to reality. Nope. Still, we have eaten out of it and shared out of it and that is all well and good. And, optimist that I am, I have made notes and have some thoughts and ideas looking ahead to 2025. 

Why not? 

My One Wild and Precious Life

 

I did catch the last of the butterfly weed (this photo was taken in 2022)

My last post was three months ago today. Rereading it today, I see I was blithely taking stock of my garden and nattering on about how many medical appointments I had in August. 

What I could not foresee (who could?) was that three days later, two "routine" and "low-risk" endoscopic exams would set off nine weeks of hospitalization and skilled nursing facility stays (the first stay cut short to send me back to the hospital) for acute pancreatitis. Finally, on October 27, I came home and have been home ever since. Still a long road ahead as I rebuild core strength and muscle mass, but at least I am home. 

Home, home, home. 

Given that the earlier predictions had been that I would likely not return home until the end of November because of the severity of the extensive internal infection and damage, I was beside myself with joy as Warren picked me up to bring me home (the skilled nursing facility is about six blocks from our house). "Oh, look, the leaves are falling! I didn't miss fall after all!" I repeated some variation of that in every block until we pulled into our driveway. 

I still say it whenever we run errands. I still say it whenever I look out the window and see the last leaves of the season drop to the ground. 

This unexpected medical event was not only a shock to both me and Warren, but also a huge eye-opener as to the fragility of life and the unpredictability of time. We had always imagined I would die after a long, slow, fade-out from the myeloma and that there would be "time" to enjoy life together before that happened. Ha. I coded during my first hospital stay from sudden and acute hemorrhaging; Warren was present when this happened, so he got the full shocking impact of watching the medical team rushing to save my life.

A life-changing event? Absolutely. How could it not be? For him, for me, for us as a couple. Our lives moving forward will be forever shaped by this. It has been a crash course in what commitment means. For me, there is even a stronger sense of what Wilma Mankiller meant when she wrote about surviving a near-fatal accident: "there was the woman who lived before and the woman who lives afterwards." I am not the woman who lived before August 23, but I am very much the woman who lives afterwards. I don't know what that means yet, but here I am.

Contrary to my usual approach of being open about my medical status, we have both kept quiet about this one. Warren did not have the bandwidth to field questions about me, especially while he was launching the Symphony season and driving 25 miles one-way to see me in the hospital. He has spent hours and hours and hours with me, both while I was away and after I got home: caring for me, watching out for me, helping me recover. (As has my dear friend and former PCP, Pat.) But time to talk about me or answer questions? Heck, no. As for me, I had zero capacity for visitors while being treated and even after returning home. I had no capacity to even talk on the phone, let alone anything more. Even writing an email was a stretch for a long time. I am slowly regaining strength but I am still guarding my time and carefully watching my energy levels as I move forward into my new life. 

Besides the simple and stunning gift of life, there has been another upside to this catastrophe: a reset of my attitude. Talk about the scales falling from my eyes. I look around and think what an amazing thing life is. What an amazing thing the world is. I sit at the kitchen table as the sun comes up and watch its rays spangle the frosted grass into a thousand diamonds and tiny rainbows. I step outside to see the impossibly blue sky (we are having a prolonged fall of brilliant sunny days) and take in a deep breath while I stand there, lost in gratitude at seeing that vivid sky over me.

The late, great poet Mary Oliver said it so well (in so many ways and in so many poems); she was a huge advocate for the importance of nature to our well-being, seeing it as a life-giving, healing force in our sometimes narrow lives. Oliver's challenge from "The Summer Day" seems most apropos as I move forward: "Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?"

As I take stock from where I sit, writing this, I wonder. There will likely be a garden next year (as you can imagine, this year's garden ended up in tatters with my hospitalization). I am starting to bake again. I have been writing. But the question remains: what do I plan to do with my one wild and precious life?

Time will tell.

Having Our Day

 

Henry David Thoreau

Spring is coming on, for the most part earlier than usual. It is startling to see daffodils not just sending up shoots, but in full bloom. Having just finished reading The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration by Jake Bittle, I look down at them and wonder what kind of world my grandchildren will live in and what nature - anywhere - will look like. Bill McKibben's The End of Nature came out 44 years ago and we are still pretending everything is fine.

From The Great Displacement (which was just published; god, I love our library system), I turned to Solid Seasons: The Friendship of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson by Jeffrey S. Cramer. Earlier this year I tried diligently to read Emerson: The Mind on Fire by Robert Richardson, and was taken with the subject, but the tiny type (9 or maybe 10 point) did me in. Richardson was known for the format of his major biographies: 100 chapters, all relatively short (5 pages was a long one), but I could not get through the typeset. All the same, I was fascinated with what I read, and expostulated to Warren and others that I could not believe that NO ONE in my early years (high school) ever exposed me to Emerson.

One cannot read or write about Emerson without reading or writing about Thoreau. And vice versa. I am far more familiar with Thoreau than Emerson. Emerson used to be a standard feature in traditional high school literature curriculum but he had all but disappeared from it by 1970. 

Thoreau was never in the high school curriculum, but many youth, and I was one of them, found our way to him all the same.

I was in high school when I first discovered his "different drummer" quote, and being deeply taken with a drummer who truly listened to and followed his own internal beat, I embraced those words. I wrote that quote in LARGE letters with a permanent marker on the back of the large scrapbook in which I was assembling my photographs. I had that scrapbook for years, carrying it across the country and back more than once. 

Note: That different drummer and I took over three decades to finally get on the same beat, so to speak, but here we are. And yes, Warren still follows the beat of that different drummer.

In read Jeffrey Cramer's author bio on the dust jacket, I caught a reference to his being a historical consultant on a short film, Walden, which was produced in 2017 for the 200th anniversary of Thoreau's birth. So while I ate lunch that day, I tracked the film down on Vimeo. 

I watched it.

I watched it with Warren.

I will watch it again.

There were moments in that film when I could murmur along to the quotes, all from Walden, and come darn close to getting them right. The film reminded me of why I was so taken with Thoreau the first time I read that book.

E. B. White revered Thoreau and Walden, and referenced both more than once in his essays and other writings. He called May 6, the day Thoreau died, "the saddest day of the year," and meant it. White admired Thoreau's vision of the meaning of human existence. (Andy White, like my husband, also moved to the beat of a different drummer.) 

Several years ago, I gave my most recently owned copy of Walden to my stepson David after he expressed an interest in reading it. I don't know if he ever did read it or even if he still has the book.

That is not important because immediately after finishing the movie, I went online to ThriftBooks and found a paperback edition from the 150th anniversary of the publication of Walden (1845). I ordered it on the spot. (Realize I rarely buy books anymore.) John Updike wrote the introduction to this edition. I have always admired Updike's writings on literature, so that was just an additional bonus. 

I can't wait for it to arrive.

What Thoreau always reminded me (and I have drifted far from remembering the lesson more times than I wish to acknowledge) was to pay attention to the natural world. Don't get so caught up in the hustle of modern society (for him, the Industrial Revolution) that you lose sight of what really counts.

Thoreau took to the woods because he "wished to live deliberately." He saw his retreat as an opportunity "to learn the essential facts of life" from the woods rather than, on his deathbed, "discover that [he] had not lived at all." He left the woods for a reason equally compelling: it seemed to him that he "had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one."

Thoreau died a few months before turning 45. Of death, Thoreau wrote, "Live your life, do your work, take your hat." (The conciseness of that summation makes me smile.) It was his mentor and friend Ralph Waldo Emerson (who lived another 20 years, almost reaching the age of 80), who captured the essence of the spread of life: "Our fear of death is like our fear that summer will be short. But when we have had our swing of pleasure, our fill of fruit, and our swelter of heat, we say we have had our day."

"We have had our day." 

Even without the cancer of 18+ years, let alone the new diagnosis, I have no illusions about my being in the autumn of my days. Like Thoreau, I have left lives - careers, communities, focuses - because I had others to live. And like Emerson, I can truly say I have had my day.

And am grateful for it. 

Those Tomatoes!

 Back in October, I wrote about picking all of the remaining tomatoes in my garden. Between the cooler temperatures and the change in the slant of the sun, the ones still on the vine were not likely to ripen. As I noted a few days later, I gave some away and continued to put the remainder out daily for a sunbath.

What I picked back in October

We are now at mid-November and I am delighted, nay, thrilled, to report that I have continued to enjoy the tomatoes. A few hit the compost pile because they had problems that could not be cut out or worked around, but all the rest have been going on sandwiches and salads or just into my mouth as a snack. (Warren does not eat tomatoes, for the most part, so except for a few that ended up in a skillet dish, I am the one doing all the eating!)

As of this morning, here is my remaining ripe tomato stash:

A few are getting a little leathery, yet are still delicious. (I know, because I just popped two in my mouth while shooting this photo.)

I am not sure the ones lollygagging on the kitchen sill will make it to full ripeness, but they are still intact and not showing signs of decay:

The lollygaggers

Next week my dad will be joining us for Thanksgiving. I am hoping to be able to put some of the very last, if not the last, tomatoes of 2022 on his salad.

What a great tomato year!